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High-profile M/V homicide trial opens Monday

LOWELL -- She was a popular adjunct math professor at Middlesex Community College who was known for her warm smile and her passion for running.

He is a 44-year-old Wilmington man who had been suffering from depression since losing his 22-month-son to kidney failure in 2008 and

At 11:45 a.m. on Feb. 21, 2011, the paths of 51-year-old Kim Forte and Charles McNeil Jr. crossed with a fatal result.

Prosecutors allege that McNeil, of 5 Lloyd Road, was driving a Nissan Sentra south on Main Street in Wilmington when his car veered off the road near Glen Road, hit and killed Forte, of Wilmington. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

Police identified Forte from a fitness card in her pocket. Then Forte's husband arrived at the scene looking for her, worried because she had been gone too long.

McNeil is tentatively scheduled to go on trial Monday charged with motor-vehicle homicide (operating under the influence of drugs and reckless operation) and operating under the influence of drugs -- second offense.

Authorities allege McNeil 's speech was difficult to understand and he failed several field-sobriety tests.

Defense attorney Michael Pinelli, who represented McNeil during his 2011 district court arraignment, said his client has been suffering from depression since losing his 22-month-old son, Declain, to kidney failure in 2008.

McNeil spent four days at a mental hospital prior to the fatal accident, Pinelli said.

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McNeil allegedly told police that on the morning of the crash, he had taken the prescribed anti-depressant Zoloft and anti-anxiety drug Vistaril, Pinelli said.

McNeil was leaving McLean Hospital in Belmont as an outpatient and going home when the accident occurred, Pinelli said.

In her obituary, Forte was described in her obituary as someone who married her high school sweetheart, Louis J. Forte, with whom she was married for 30 years, and had a son, Timothy.

She worked as a dental assistant in 1983 after moving to Wilmington, earned an associates degree in math from MCC and her bachelor's degree in math from UMass Lowell.

At the time of her death, Forte was teaching at MCC and pursuing her master's degree in math.

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